Sony Online Fills Creative Void

Finally filling a two-year job vacancy, Sony Online Ent. has promoted Raph Koster to the position of chief creative officer. Previously, Koster had been the creative director of Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, a massively multi-player online role-playing game run by SOE. His predecessor, Brad McQuaid, one of the creators of Everquest, went on to co-found Sigil Games Online after he left SOE.

According to SOE figures, more than 500,000 people currently subscribe to online games, a growing source of revenue for entertainment companies. In SOE’s case, players pay as low as $6.99 per month for the three games in its StationPass product and up to $12.99 per month for the MMO Planet Side.

Sony Online Ent. is a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Digital, which is also home to the EFX and character-creation house Imageworks. On Monday, SOE further announced that it was creating an online game-matching service called SOEGames.net. It’ll allow players to find competitors anywhere on the Internet to play SOE games with them. The company has also signed the equivalent of co-prod deals with game developers SolWorks and Lodestone to create new content for SOE.